Word After Word

It’s sitting here on the desk, like a village, a tombstone, a brick, an opening, a dream, a crust. Between my tea mug and my water bottle and the jar of one thousand nonworking pens. It’s two and one quarter inches high. But it seems feet-thick, too thick, cement thick. I’m finding it hard to turn the first page.

But I have to read it straight through now and see what I have done. I have to find things to love. I have to read it anticipating what others will think while simultaneously not worrying about what others will think. This is almost impossible to do, but it’s what writers must do. It’s very like that French sport (I forget the name) where you rappel through the city in shorts.

I have to read this book I wrote, pretending I haven’t written it, haven’t read it before. This feels like jumping off a cliff for no good reason. I want to read any other book right now.  I want to read It’s Not About the Tapas. I want to read the dictionary. I want to read cookbooks in bed. It’s so bad, I even want to write recommendation letters for my pupils. It’s so bad, this reading-my-work dread that earlier today, I did the really really scaredest writer of all time thing: I paired and balled my socks.

Related posts:

1. Away from the Manuscript
2. Blogging is Writing Out Loud
3. Worst Kept Secret in the English Department?
4. People of the Book
5. December 1